Like many young social media privacy advocates, Arielle Geismar was no stranger to mental health issues impacting young people when she and Zamaan Qureshi partnered to try to bring about change.

“No matter how magnanimously Instagram describes its product updates, its goal is usually to keep people on the app for longer and longer,” said Zamaan Qureshi, a founder of Design It For Us, a nonprofit that pushes for policy to protect children and teenagers online.

On Tuesday, June 10th, youth-led advocacy organizations Design It For Us and Encode hosted a rally in support of tech legislation in the New York State Capitol. Young people from across the state gathered with lawmakers, united by a shared call to pass legislation designed to protect against the harms of social media and AI.

Groups like Common Sense Media, Design It For Us, Mothers Against Media Addiction and the Tech Oversight Project have spearheaded the effort under the umbrella of the Kids Code Coalition.

Design It for Us, a youth-led coalition that advocates for AADC bills, urged Scott to sign the bill.

“Meta’s persistent failure to protect young people from predators on Instagram reveals deep and dangerous flaws in its platform, one that stems from the unchecked power it holds as a social media monopoly,” said Zamaan Qureshi, co-chair on the online safety watchdog Design It For Us.

According to an investigation conducted by the youth-led nonprofit Design It For Us and watchdog Accountable Tech — later corroborated by Washington Post columnist Geoffrey Fowler — the platform continues to surface age-inappropriate, sexually explicit, and generally harmful content despite content control safeguards.

Early on Monday, May 19, the youth-led Design It For Us coalition gathered at the Manchester roundabout to raise awareness about Vermont bill S.69—the Age-Appropriate Design Code Act. Advocating for safer digital experiences for young people, the group’s presence highlighted the importance of youth voices in shaping policy.

Both Pickarski and Cherry worked collaboratively on the event with the group Design It For Us, a youth-led coalition advocating for safer social media and online platforms for kids, teens, and young adults.

Four more Gen Z testers, part of a youth organization called Design It For Us, did the same experiment, and all got recommended sexual content. Four of the five got body image and disordered eating content, too, such as a video of a woman saying “skinny is a lifestyle, not a phase.”

In an investigation by Accountable Tech and Design It For Us, Instagram was found serving sexualized, racist, and harmful content to protected Teen accounts.

Zamaan Qureshi, co-chair of Design It For Us, said young people must speak out about social media harms so that authority figures can facilitate change.